The mortification of Jeff Sessions
THE appearance of Jeff Sessions before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday didn’t bring us much closer to understanding what did or didn’t happen between Donald Trump and the Russians.
But as I watched Sessions, I saw a dark parable of bets misplaced and souls under siege. This is what happens when you draw too close to Trump.
One day, you’re riding high on the myth of Trump as a transformative figure. The next, you’re ensnared in his recklessness: the case with Sessions, who sank low enough that he felt compelled to offer Trump his resignation.
“It’s just like through the looking glass: What is this?” Sessions said during his Senate testimony, and while he was alluding to the suggestion that he and the Russian ambassador had plotted together to steal a presidential election, he could have been referring to the warped topography of Trumplandia.
It’s a reputation-savaging place. Ask Rod Rosenstein for sure. Herbert McMaster, too. Also James Mattis. Sean Spicer. Reince Priebus. Rex Tillerson. Dan Coats. All have been under pressure, undercut or contra- dicted. They’ve been asked to pledge their fidelity to a man who adores only himself.
My God, that video, the one of the cabinet in full session at long last. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s the most chilling measure yet of Trump’s narcissism, and it’s a breathtaking glimpse into what that means for the people around him.
They don’t volunteer purplish flattery like that because it’s their wont. He wants it so badly that they cough it up.
McMaster, whose book Dereliction of Duty is expressly about talking truth to power, found himself at a lectern doing damage control for his damage-prone boss. He vouched that Trump’s divulgence of classified information to Russian officials at the White House was no big deal.
No one in Trump’s administration was forced into this service and its compromises. There were those with higher motives, and they find themselves in a White House governed by dread. What tweet or tantrum awaits? They thought that they’d be bolstering a leader. They see now that they’re holding a grenade.
You could sense the stress of that in Sessions, who endorsed Trump before any other senator did, won the prize of attorney general but on Tuesday was the prosecuted.
He called the suggestion that he’d conspired with Russia “an appalling and detestable lie”.
“I did not recuse myself from defending my honour against scurrilous and false allegations,” he declared.
No, but he made it a hell of a lot harder the moment he took Trump’s hand.
For all Trump’s career and all his campaign, he played the part of Midas, claiming that everything he touched turned to gold.
That was never true. But this is: Almost everyone who touches him is tarnished, whether testifying or not.